Arab Spring/Iran Special: Is This a Music-Driven Revolution? (Osborne)

Advisory --- Some of the images in the video are graphic

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Throughout the last 11 months of the uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East --- and, before that, the protests in Iran --- we have noted the intersections between activism and music. We learned about rapper El General in Tunisia, and there were the images of the Egyptian Revolution, set to a song by Kanye West.

Now Matt Osborne, writing for Crooks and Liars, goes farther into the dynamics of music and protest....

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Iran Video Special: The Fire Under the Ashes

Al Jazeera journalists secretly film inside Iran, interviewing the families of those slain in the protests since the 2009 Presidential election and the activists maintaining the hope for change:

The Latest from Iran (11 November): Chest-Thumping

See also Iran Analysis: The Pattern of Confrontation --- Obama Wins, Regime Wins, Iranian People Lose
Iran Snap Analysis: The US Strikes a Military Pose
The Latest from Iran (10 November): Tag-Team Politics

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1655 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Farzaneh Mirvand, the wife of detained journalist Siamak Ghaderi, talks about the abuse of her husband in Evin Prison:

Even thinking about the days that my husband was in Ward 209 is very difficult for me. He was in solitary confinement for 34 days under harsh interrogations, was blindfolded, beaten up with a baton and threatened in order to force him to give a false confession.

At one of his interrogation sessions, an interrogator slapped him on his face so hard that he and the chair he was sitting in hit the ground. My husband is still suffering from the injury to his neck that he suffered during that fall.

Yes, for these pressures and other violations. I have gone to every place I could and have told the authorities about them, but they just laughed at me.

Even during his trial, my husband told the judge about his tortures, but he, without paying any attention to my husband’s remarks, issued a verdict based on the false confessions taken from my husband.

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Syria (and Beyond) LiveBlog: The Spread of the Deaths

A rally in Homs in Syria last night

See also Oman Feature: A Not-Quite-So-Quiet Arab State
Thursday's Syria (and Beyond) LiveBlog: "Did This Rocket Fall from Outer Space?"

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0150 GMT: The Bahraini Ministry of Interior is now trying to explain how its policemen were not responsible for the attack on the house and car of the head of the Al-Wefaq opposition party, Sheikh Ali Salman, blaming protesters while shifting attention from authorities:. Here's the lengthy statement in full from the Ministry of Interior's website: 

The General Director of Northern Governorate Police has announced that at around 10:55 PM on Thursday around 60 individuals went into illegal procession in Bilad Al Qadeem with the aim to block roads and hinder traffic flow. They were also involved in vandalism, rioting and hurling Molotov cocktails and stones at policemen. This led to the interference of police forces to disperse them and reopen the roads by shooting tear gas and sound shoots. 

In regard of what was circulated by some individuals through social media websites claiming that the house and car of the General Secretary of Al Wefaq National Islamic Society were damaged by policemen, the General Director explained that vandals were 50 meters away from the house and there was a distance of around 50 meters between vandals and policemen, hence they were around 100 meters away from the house. Policemen used teargas and sound shoots and both are hurled by hand, so it is difficult for them to reach to the house and the car that was next to it. The shell...that was found inside the car is a [shell] that is hurled by the hand as it is shown in the image. 

He added that the concerned team moved to the scene, while no complaint was reported by those affected by the incident and that explains that those who created the damages bear the responsibility of what they did.

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Israel-Palestine Opinion: Want a Peace Process? Use Trade Policy and Stop the Settlements (Settler Watch)

West Bank Settlement of Ofra (Reuters)Even as Israel ignores the demands of the wider world and despite obvious violations of international law, it has been rewarded with an economically beneficial Association Agreement with the EU. This facilitates trade between the two parties and gives Israeli products a competitive advantage on the European market.

Trade policy is the key to persuading Israel, unanimously voted into the economic cooperation organization OECD more than a year ago, to respect international law, as Europe is the country’s most important market. A hard line can create the necessary political space to achieve the necessary change in Israeli policy. If the expansion of the settlements becomes too costly, this will cease.

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Iran Analysis: The Pattern of Confrontation --- Obama Wins, Regime Wins, Iranian People Lose (Siavashi)

Nice politics. Shame about the reality --- beyond the immediate calculations, the US arms sales will only provoke Iran's hardliners and give ammunition to those within the system who want confrontation and animosity with the West. The regime will play the national security trump card again: "Look what the Americans and the Israelis are doing against us!" This will translate nont into a confrontation with Washington and West Jerusalem. The blows will come instead through more human rights abuses within Iran.

So if Obama wins and Tehran's regime wins, who loses in this pattern?

Easy call. As has been the case whenever Iran is treated with any kind of external threat, it's the Iranian people.

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Iran Snap Analysis: The US Strikes a Military Pose

Will these steps make a real difference in the regional jostling with Tehran, let alone Washington's drive for international isolation of Iran? I doubt it --- the significant game is the context for political influence amidst shifting circumstances, as the events across North Africa and the Middle East should have brought home to Washington this year --- but when in doubt....

Strike a pose.

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Oman Feature: A Not-Quite-So-Quiet Arab State

Supermarket on Fire During Oman Protests, February 2011Oman held parliamentary elections on October 15 -- two weeks before the Tunisian elections that captured the world's attention. But nobody paid them much mind. And why should they? There is not much more to be said beyond the high "participation" rate (76 percent of those who bothered to register), the solitude that the one elected woman may feel among her 83 male colleagues, or the election of three protesters. Tribal alliances still drove results in a country where political parties are not allowed and where, for most seats, 1,500 votes is enough to get elected.

But this might be deceiving. This has been Oman's least quiet year in a generation.

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The Latest from Iran (10 November): Tag-Team Politics

1646 GMT: Radio Zamaneh is now confirming that opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi has been moved to a "more appropriate location," according to his son.

Karroubi was being held in a small office apartment, and his family had stressed that the cramped conditions were highly detrimental to his health.

Mohammad Taghi Karroubi wrote that the rent for the new apartment is being shared by the Karroubi family and the Ministry of Intelligence, due to the presence of their forces in the apartment. He added that the authorities have been refusing to allow his mother, Fatemeh Karroubi, to stay with her husband.

1325 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Kalemeh reports that Mostafa Tajzadeh, prominent reformist and former Deputy Minister of Interior, is being denied visits in prison.

Tajzadeh, detained soon after the 2009 Presidential election, is serving a six-year sentence.

1145 GMT: Nuke Watch. We posted the second part of our analysis of the IAEA report on Iran's nuclear programme, "Not All Sources Are Equal". Meanwhile....

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Iran Special Analysis (Part 2): The IAEA's Nuclear Report --- Not All Sources Are Equal

If the burden on Iran, in the eyes of the IAEA, has been to show the level of co-operation to meet questions and assuage doubts, then the burden on the IAEA --- given that "proof", of either the absence or presence of a militarised nuclear programme, is likely to be beyond reach --- was to at least sweep away some of the cynicism over its effort by establishing a clear record of its enquiry.

The Agency may have cleared the low bar set by The New York Times, for whom any assertion was going to constitute "meticulous sourcing", but it has not gone much higher.

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